


a place for you to love me

by ryyves



Category: Trollhunters (Cartoon)
Genre: Definitely self-indulgent, M/M, bisexual Jim & Toby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 00:31:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11116128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/pseuds/ryyves
Summary: two teens stay home from pride, watch gun robot, and talk about who they are.





	a place for you to love me

**Author's Note:**

> It's not because  
> our hearts are large, they're not, it's what we  
> struggle with. — Richard Siken

“I think I came down with something,” Jim says, buttoning the collar of his shirt. “I don’t think I can go this year. Don’t want to, you know, get anyone sick.” He doesn’t do well in crowds, bodies pushing his into nothing, the cacophony of thousands of voices swallowing up the air, overcoming him until he finds himself curled up against the back of some booth, hands pressed to his ears, waiting for his mother or Toby to find him. Even school lunches leave him exhausted. Today he would become just one face, one voice among thousands. Today he would lend his lungs, his whole body, to his community, and yet when he looks at his hands they are shaking, and it’s harder each breath to fill his lungs.

Now, Toby stares at him for a long time, Toby with a pride badge proudly over his heart, Toby whose mouth quivers in places only Jim knows.

“I was looking forward to going with you,” says Toby, and his voice catches an edge of disappointment. An edge of longing. Something curls up in Jim’s gut – is he bringing unhappiness upon Toby? Is he bringing hurt?

Jim is quiet for a long time, turning words over on his tongue, trying to force them past his teeth. Toby reaches out and places a hand on Jim’s arm, comforting. Reassuring. Calling him home.

Jim lifts a hand and runs his fingers over Toby’s, holding him close.

“You know I’m more of a homebody,” Jim ventures again, trying to say what he means without saying it.

Toby’s voice is shrewd, his eyes sharp. “Jim, what’s on your mind?”

Jim’s heart pounds even and furious in his ears, but he speaks. “Okay, it’s this. I don’t feel like I belong there.”

“You’re with me,” says Toby, more meaning in his rich tones than in the words alone, and Jim offers up a smile, something thin and soft and caught in the corners of his mouth.

“No, I mean. I don’t know who I am, and I don’t belong there. It’s… it’s for you. It’s not for me. There’s a place for you. There’s always a place for you. I just feel like… I have to carve out my own place, and I don’t know how to do that without being certain of who I am. Listen, can we stay home, just this time? Put on Gun Robot, lie on the couch, celebrate in our own small way. Just me and you.”

“If that’s what you need,” says Toby. “But we’ll go next year?

“Next year,” agrees Jim.

Jim flops down on the couch, leaning on the pillow as he reaches for the remote. Toby falls to the sofa beside him, resting his weight on Jim’s shoulder, and Jim smiles. This is heaven, he thinks. He presses his cheek to the top of Toby’s head, brief, kisses his hair and then leans back.

He spins the remote in his hands, staring but.

“Look, can I just talk to you?” Jim asks.

“Listen,” says Toby, “I’m gonna put on the first Gun Robot I find, and you can tell me all your woes over the sound of blasters, and if it cheers you up a little, then I’m glad to help. Give me the remote.”

Jim hands it over. Toby leaves the couch for the DVD rack, and runs his fingers along the spines until he finds something. Jim watches him, affection burning in his chest as Toby sets up the movie. Through the speakers, the abrasive sound of the previews blares, and Toby yelps. As the volume mellows out, Toby glances back with an apologetic grin. “I’ve got your back,” he says.

Jim holds out an arm for Toby to return to, and settles a hand around Toby’s shoulders, so familiar and so reassuring. So much like home, to Jim.

“I don’t really know how to talk about it,” Jim says, his voice slow and uncertain, as Toby skips through the previews.

“I dunno, Tobes. I don’t know what to do about this. I know I need to find it in myself, and declare it, but I find myself needing others to tell me: who I am, where I belong. It just feels like—my body isn’t mine. Like none of me is mine. Not like—not like it belongs to anyone else, like it’s for you or for Mom, but it’s just—wrong. _I_ feel wrong. Like I’m not enough of anything. Like I’m not fully anything. I’m scared to say I’m bi. I’m scared to say I’m anything. Like I don't have a right to.”

He’d done Little League baseball, and now, as a hero, he is still turning his body into liquid light. Now, his body and his heart fight for prominence. He needs both, more than anything. He needs to be comfortable in his skin, yet it presses too tight against him. He doesn’t know how to fix himself, how to turn himself into a person he would be happy to be. He is looking for happiness and doesn’t know where to find it, how to make himself capable of catching it.

The first strains of the Gun Robot opening music roll through the room, its first light illuminating the screen in eerie, candied colors. The glow shows Jim Toby’s face, and he is smiling.

For long minutes the boys watch the beginning of the story unfold, a story they’ve seen a hundred times and know by heart, a story no longer so different from their own. Jim runs his hand down Toby’s arm, through his hair, draws comfort from Toby’s body next to his own.

At length, in a tremulous voice, Jim says, “I just wanted to be something, to matter to somebody, or everybody, and maybe I got so caught up in that wanting that I just… forgot to be me. Forgot how to be me. And I don’t know how to go back.” He sighs. “There wasn’t, like, this moment of realization, when I _knew_ who I was, but on the flip side, I didn’t spend my whole life trying to push it down. It just… snuck up on me, this insidious thing, and one day I just noticed feeling like there was no place left for me _._ ”

Toby turns down the volume, shifts in his embrace until he’s looking up at Jim. His eyes are beautiful.

“I knew,” says Toby. “I knew the moment I saw you. I know every time you make your way around the kitchen. I know when I hear your voice through the walkie-talkie. I know every time you wave at me across the street. I know when you catch air in the canal and I’m terrified you’re going to hurt yourself, but after that one time in seventh grade, you never have. I know every time I hear you laugh.

“I didn’t have the ‘right experience,’ Jim. There isn’t a ‘right experience.’ Nothing about this is universal. You can’t hold yourself to that standard. Whoever you are is who you are. Whoever you like is who you like.”

Jim falls silent, screen burning in his eyes, and he turns and presses his lips into Toby’s hair, before he speaks, secret-soft.

“Do you love me, Tobes?"

“What sort of question is that? Of course I love you.”

“I’m not the sort of person people fall in love with,” Jim says, as if the transition makes sense. “I’m too self-conscious about my body, about my heart, about my everything. I don't let myself have new experiences. I’ve never _liked_ people _enough,_ until you. It’s like I’m not real. I don’t fit in anywhere, Tobes.”

“Nonsense,” says Toby. He takes Jim’s hand and presses it to Toby’s chest. “You fit with me.”

A smile, a secret thing. “You’re right. Of course. There’s nowhere I’d rather belong.”

“Look at me, Jim. I’m self-conscious too, all the time. That doesn’t mean we’re wrong. It never means we’re wrong. I learned that the hard way. It’s hard, and it doesn’t get any easier, it doesn’t get any fucking easier, but sometimes you just have to say, ‘This is who I am,’ and own it.”

Toby holds him close, rests a hand on Jim’s chest, smooths down curling hair, and Jim leans into the touch.

Jim nods, and looked away, lulled by the explosions on-screen. “Tell me I’m not wrong. Tell me I belong. Tell me there’s a place for me.”

“You don’t have to know. You don’t have to have known. There’s still a space for you. There’s always a space for you, even if you have to, like you said, carve it out yourself. And it’s exhausting, but I’ll be with you through all of it, just like you were for me.”

“Thank you. Thank you. You mean everything to me, Toby.”

“Anything. I hope you’re a little more at ease.”

“I am. I owe it to you.”

Toby cranks up the volume, the sound of crashes, the tense music, the voices raised in battle-triumph reverberating through the room. “Then let’s enjoy the shit out of Gun Robot. You ready for a marathon?”

And in response Jim kisses him.


End file.
